Ferry company TurboJet has reduced its daily sailings between the two SARs significantly, when compared with April’s operations, the Macau Daily Times reports.
Back in April, there were 58 TurboJet sailings each day between Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan and Macao’s Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal. Now, there are 40. Twenty ferry journeys depart from Sheung Wan each day, while just 20 return from the Outer Harbour, according to the company’s website. The company has just two daily sailings between Hong Kong’s Kowloon and Macao’s Taipa Ferry Terminal (one in each direction).
The alternative ferry company plying a similar route, Cotai Water Jet, has 46 daily services between Sheung Wan and Taipa Ferry Terminal. It doesn’t service the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal.
[See more: How to get to Macao’s main attractions from the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal by bus]
According to the Macau Daily Times’ sources, the changes came down to a restructuring of TurboJet’s staffing and vessels – not a lack of demand from passengers.
However, the paper also cited official figures showing that Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal was a far less popular point of entry to Macao than its Taipa counterpart. During the first half of this year, 731,000 people boated in via the Outer Harbour terminal while 1.23 million arrived via Taipa’s ferry terminal.
The Outer Harbour terminal has been beset by issues this year, from disrupted ferry services due to construction work to calls for improvements from its stall owners – who say the facility lacks basic offerings that visitors expect, and claim that its low volumes of foot traffic don’t justify the high rents they are charged.
